


Rare Earth

by used_songs



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-20
Updated: 2010-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/used_songs/pseuds/used_songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like calls to like; we are both hidden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rare Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Let it out, Jack. Talk to me. prompt by redsnake05
> 
> Kink: Noisiness during sex (extracting noises from a usually quiet lover)

_Lanthanum: I am hidden_

Like calls to like; we are both hidden. I didn't realize it at first because you always seemed so open. But you aren't. Not really. You hide yourself with a façade of easy frankness. Not like me, with a secret self hidden away behind walls so stern and obvious that they make me invisible. Unless you have eyes made to see me, Jack. I think you do. This has been my year of trying to be seen again, especially since you came back. But I have a long way to go and now … I know loss is what has made you more closed off than before because I am sometimes quiet now … again.

You are silent, like someone who has given up trying to say what is impossible to say. And it extends to sex, this silence of yours. When I sit above you, feel you flex under me, feel you move in me and move me, and I look down from burnt white heights into your flushed and careless face, I want to hear you say something … but you never do. And when I kneel before you and look up into your suddenly still face and feel your hard hand curved around the back of my head, pressing, I want to hear you say something. But you never do. When I hold you down on the narrow bed and press lips, then teeth to your throat and wait for a beat before continuing, I want to hear you speak. But you only breathe and, while the stuttering shakiness of those breaths is gratifying, I want more.

If I can learn to be visible, then perhaps you can learn to speak again.

_Praseodymium: Leek-green_

When I first touched you, I was a novice at this. I had only ever loved once before, a desperate and painful and obsessive love that has scarred me like the fires at Canary Wharf never could. I was green, untried, and you were a bit hasty, expecting me to catch up.

But I did. I was tempered quickly, beaten into the sharp blade I was maybe meant to be, by circumstances and by your strong hands.

I think of the few things we have ever said to each other, and I am greedy because I want more. To be the one whose ears are full of your secret sounds. To be the one to catch your breath in the bottle of my ear and hold all your words safe because they are you.

In the beginning, you held onto me and I whispered against your skin as if I could make myself small enough to climb inside. Now … you press closed lips to my throat as I touch you and you place a hand over your mouth as you jerk in my arms.

_Neodymium: New-one_

In my dreams, which don't always feel sad to me, I know that I want to be the one, selfishly, even if that will only magnify your loss. I know. Too much reading leads to too much reading into things, and it's not often that I run a finger over the tops of those books anymore. Fantasies, like the story I used to hold close to myself at night, the story of saving her against all the odds. It doesn't lead to happiness. But your words … I've forgone happiness before. I would give you anything, Jack. I am your man, remade by you.

The ink sinks all the way down to my bones where you are written in me, in the silences of gesture and touch. My skin is a painted layer over carved words of gristle and flesh, in the stern wood of my being. You in me, traced in solid capitals, made new by words and by letting go. And you may be so old that there are endless rings in your deep red heart, like logs dredged up a hundred years later from the cold lake bottom. But, Jack, if you call for me, then I will come and maybe your heart can turn over and be new.

You know that when I am true, I am unshakable.

You are a green knight, an otherworldly champion who lays his life down repeatedly, looking through thick trees, a newfound and faithful friend dressed, I once thought, in the skin of an enemy. Me? I am, was, will in some way always be uncertain and untried and unready, even though you have chosen me. Or, rather, I was the one who stood up, wasn't I? I was the one who spoke to you, challenged you and accepted your challenge in turn.

I touch the blade of your axe in the quiet of the hall and swallow. I could follow you there. But I can't follow you back again, can I?

You are written in me, even when you don't say a word, only look at me and smile a little. You are traced in the hacked carving of an old tree stump in this the ancient forest, written in the ground itself. You are incised in marble, resolute. Me? The city. Me, the ruins that we are struggling to repair. Me, rebuilt upon layers of dead cities, the brown and greasy rain running over charcoal expressionist buildings. The clouds that drop their feet down white to the ground. You and I in this, until I fall away.

Me, I am the paper, the surface, the wood, the world. You. You are the word, if you would only speak.

_Dysprosium: Hard to get_

Not hard to get, but hard to keep. There is a difference, you know. I may seem mild, but I will not lose this.

I have already lost so much. The pearl I lost, through every shadow, my hands the broken clasp because I was not strong enough or smart enough or determined enough. Or because it was a battle meant to be lost. I will not lose this, although I will lose in the end. I let you fall, Jack. I let them take you and bury you and stop your mouth with dirt for long years of death. I let you fall, Jack, and you were lost for so long and for me the time was so short … but so irrevocable. Please forgive me and open up your mouth to me. Please tell me.

You going down into darkness to save me when I am unsaveable. You the love and the lover like some ecstatic poem of want. You fighting death and not fearing death and loving the unforgivable and desperate wildness in me, hidden beneath this quiet skin.

You the voice crying in the wilderness, in the dark. The world is nothing without the words. But still you will not say them. You turn under me and grip me hard enough to bruise and I look at you in the half light. What are you burning to say, Jack? What words are killed by fierce embraces here in the dark?

I can live without the word love, Jack. I had that once and I don't expect to have it again. Love ended in me when my love turned to kill me and take me with her into death. I can live without that word. The words I want … I want the words that show me I am touching you somewhere where you will remember me in all of the time that will go and never come again.

I have been here long enough to know. The words are like breaths, panting and gasping.

_Promthium: Fire-bringer_

Do you feel it in your hands, Jack? Say it. Say that you feel the burning and pulling of lust from the end of every finger and the headiness of it as your heart races.

Do you feel me buried deep inside you, Jack? Say it. Say that you feel me shudder, that I can make you move with the forgetfulness of desire.

Do you want me, Jack? Say it, and I will be next to you so close that every breath you take will be shared and we will have a double heartbeat.


End file.
